andrew sullivan's deep dive into critical theory has zero references to adorno, horkheimer, marcuse or habermas. you know, the people who actually founded it. this is what passes for intellectualism among conservatives and anti-"woke" liberals

the reason it has zero references to them is because he spends the entire piece semi-coherently rage-whining about some strawman version of intersectionality, which is entirely absent from their writings. but calling it "critical theory" is like red meat for anti-"woke" liberals

at one point in the piece he claims that critical theory originated in 1960s postmodernism. to anyone with even cursory knowledge of critical theory this is like saying einstein's theory of relativity originated in scientology from the 1950s. it's fucking deranged

also what I wouldn't give to be able to ask andrew sullivan to define "postmodernism". "uh well you know they don't like truth and objectivity and uh like foucault and derrida and stuff uh they don't like truth? they hate truth? right?"

anyone who falls for this shit is a dupe

the hilarious thing is that there is actually a lot of overlap between the putative claims of anti-"woke" liberals and the second generation of critical theorists like habermas, but they're so intellectually lazy and incurious they just use it as a cheap prop to flail against

like, one of habermas' main arguments is we should have ideal speech situations where identitarian contingencies shouldn't enter into it bc they distort truth-seeking elements of discourse. he wrote a 2 volume book defending this thesis. sullivan: "u critical theorist, you stink"

ah, just found this very good and detailed take-down of the deranged sullivan piece, which is standard fare for the entire conservative and anti-"woke" liberal crowd https://twitter.com/generalityiii/status/1289642937022742528

incidentally, asad, who isn't a hack and actually knows what he's talking about, is studiously avoided by this crowd. he asked thomas chatterton williams to debate him, but chatterton demanded a 10K fee. the entire thing is a grift all the way down